


Catch of the Day

by MasterofAllImagination



Category: Foyle's War
Genre: Don't copy to another site, Fishing, M/M, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-05
Updated: 2019-08-05
Packaged: 2020-07-31 15:27:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,503
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20117329
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MasterofAllImagination/pseuds/MasterofAllImagination
Summary: A bucolic afternoon goes awry twice over.





	Catch of the Day

“Doing anything Sunday afternoon?” Foyle had asked Kieffer on a Friday, without much thinking about it.

Pausing, Kieffer said, "N-o....Just a routine inspection at noon."

"Then how about fishing at one?"

Kieffer assented immediately and fell quickly into a tangent about a piece of tackle he was eager to try, and though the finger he brandished as he spoke would have raised disdainful eyebrows all the way to Edinburgh, Foyle couldn't find it in himself to be irked. As Kieffer blustered on, he wondered briefly when that had happened. 

The appointed hour came round in its usual sedate manner, and for once, Kieffer followed suit, keeping his lazily-rolled vowels to a minimum as they cast their lines. Occasionally, Foyle would catch the creak of his waders as he shifted his weight, or the susurrus of his clothes when he adjusted his line. Foyle found it comforting in a way he could not put a name to. Found Kieffer’s presence—_companionable_. That was it. And the fact that the man was always quick at hand with the net when a trout bit did not go unappreciated either.

“Fine day,” Kieffer observed, in a rare pocket of conversation.

There was a nip threatening in the air, kept in abeyance until nightfall, but making its intentions known. Through intermittent clouds, the sun could be seen to spark off the water, and warm his face. “_Very_ fine,” Foyle affirmed.

“You come out here every Sunday?”

“When I can.”

“Back home, I’d go on Friday afternoons. Lots of fishermen in town, but they all went out with their wives or to the bars after work at the end of the week. I had the river all to myself.”

It occurred to Foyle to wonder what his wife did with herself while her husband was away from home in pursuit of fish. It was uncharitable of him—surely, a man deserves some time to himself. And perhaps he made up for it by taking her out on Saturdays instead. Or, Kieffer may not even be married—he casually turned and sought the glint of a ring on the hand grasping his pole. But his hand was in his pocket, and Foyle caught instead Kieffer’s open gaze of inquiry in response to his silence.

“Sounds enjoyable,” Foyle offered, lowering his eyes.

“Yeah. It was.”

Silence collapsed upon them until nature’s murmurs reasserted themselves. Slowly, above the crackle of the water, Foyle again grew aware of the sounds of Kieffer as he stirred. A week's worth of cases and station bureaucracy drained from his thoughts in much the same way as the river in which they waded drained toward the ocean, and the frown lines bracketing his mouth molded to a less severe frame.

Rapid clicking started up at his shoulder as Kieffer’s line caught again (not that Foyle was keeping count), and he went automatically for the net.

“Whoah,” Kieffer muttered. He was having difficulty reeling in the line. Must be a big catch. Foyle abandoned his course for the riverbed and took a small step towards him. Now, the man was really struggling.

“Easy, there,” Foyle said.

Through clenched teeth, Kieffer replied, “I think I’m caught on something. Might need your help here.”

His rod was bending dangerously. Foyle parted the water with his shins and drew up side by side to him, peering up river towards whatever might have snagged Kieffer’s hook. Something large was floating slowly their way. A familiar, sick feeling dropped into Foyle’s sternum.

"Have you got a knife on you?”

“Left breast pocket.” Kieffer's voice was slightly strained.

Foyle promptly retrieved the switchblade and neatly severed the line. Unbalanced for a moment, Kieffer put out a hand to Foyle’s shoulder to steady himself, pointing with the newly lax rod. “What _is_ that?”

“I don’t know,” Foyle lied. “Help me, will you?”

_Not in this place_, Foyle thought. Not while doing this; not in his place of quietude—the unfair dissonance of it made his heart curdle.

Quicker than he, Kieffer had taken up a branch and moved into the swifter current at the center of the river. Foyle positioned himself farther downstream in case his footing went in the loose bed rocks.

“Looks like—a log, or something,” Kieffer called.

Though it was a fool’s hope, Foyle prayed regardless that a log was all it was. But then Kieffer uttered a low oath, and Foyle knew his suspicions to be sadly correct.

“We have to get it out of the water,” he told him.

“I know. I’m trying. The current’s fighting me. Here, grab on.” Kieffer switched the branch to his back hand and held it out to Foyle. Foyle set his heels in the silt and gripped tight as Kieffer extended his arm span—longer than his own, naturally; probably best it was he who had gone first—and managed to get a hand around a piece of fabric floating loose from the waterlogged body as it drifted past.

Between the two of them, silently, they hauled it back to the bank, just barely able to discern gender by the reed-strewn hair. The face was too bloated and the coveralls too unisex.

“Not—_quite_ what you were expecting to do today, I don’t imagine,” Foyle observed.

It startled a laugh from Kieffer. “You could say that. Good thing the police are already here.”

“Good thing,” Foyle murmured. For God’s sake. It was his _day off_. “Maybe we should get some more.” 

Mindful of the last time he’d called the man by his surname—_“Please, it’s John. Only my CO calls me Kieffer”_—Foyle addressed him by his Christian name. “John, do you think you could take my gear back to my house? On Steep Lane? This looks like it’ll take some time.”

“Sure thing. I’ll drop it off on my way back to base. What about—?“ Kieffer proffered their day's catch, of the non-human variety.

Foyle winced. It pained him, but he had no icebox, and they’d surely go off. “I suppose it’s too late to throw them back.”

“Funny,” Kieffer said, jerking a thumb over his shoulder at the dead man, “but I was just thinking the same thing.”

Stuffing his hands in his pockets, Foyle cracked a half-smile in shared chagrin at the unfortunate ending of their day out. “Shame. I was rather looking forward to a hot meal tonight.”

Kieffer shrugged, basket still in hand. “I’ll fix them up for you. For when you get back.”

“I couldn’t ask—“

“Good thing I’m offering. Christopher,” Kieffer added pointedly.

_Sneaky blighter_, Foyle thought, an eyebrow incrementally rising. _Give an inch, lose a mile. _

Knowing when he was beaten, Foyle inclined his head. “If you insist.”

They had to call off the search a few hours later as the sun began to dip—_“Could use the torches, sir,”_ Milner offered, but Foyle rightly pointed out that they only wanted _one_ drowned body showing up that day, thank-you-_very_-much, and that had settled that.

His homeward bound footsteps were listless but rapid as the cold closed in behind him and the sun sank before him. On his doorstep, he felt in his pocket for his keys, brow contracting when his fingers came up empty. The smell of cooking fish—and was that _butter?—_reached his nose around the same time as the memory of Kieffer promising to set them up for him, like a housewife might’ve done.

Foyle closed his eyes and breathed deep. If the smell was anything to go by, just as _competently_ as a housewife might’ve, though he would not have expected any less from a fisherman as skilled in his craft as Kieffer. He pushed open the door quietly and shucked his outwear in the entryway.

“That you, Christopher?” Kieffer called from the kitchen.

He froze. He’d expected the man to have been long gone by now. Gingerly, Foyle walked into the hall, feeling a stranger in his own house for a barmy instant. “Unless you were expecting someone else,” he said, peering round the corner and into the kitchen. Kieffer was standing over something at the stove and brandishing a spatula. Foyle blinked hard a few times, but the incongruous image remained. 

“Didn’t know how you liked it,” Kieffer said, giving the pan a prod, “so I fixed it the way my mom used to. Cooked real slow in butter with lemon and thyme.”

Foyle inhaled deeply. “I can smell it. Butter from the base?” It certainly wasn’t from his _own_ larder; not least the large quantities he could now see bubbling merrily away from Kieffer’s side.

“Yep.”

“Thank you.”

“We’ve got plenty—“

“For this, as well,” Foyle clarified, raising his eyes to the ceiling, hoping that it encompassed what he wanted to convey. _Thank you for rescuing my day_, he might have said, but didn’t.

“I’ll admit, my motives weren’t entirely altruistic.”

“Oh?”

Blithely, Kieffer turned over a lemon slice. “It’s convenient to have a constable in your debt,” he said, not hardly waiting for Foyle to take even mock affront before giving him a quick wink.

“Ah. I see.” Foyle turned away and began to draw down dishes and cutlery for two. “If that tastes as good as it smells, I shall be very deeply in your debt indeed.”

They ate in relative silence, Foyle intent on his food—which was one of the better preparations of trout he had sampled, not least owing to the generous American war larder—and Kieffer the same.

"Should have a couple fingers of Scotch left in the bottom cabinet,” Foyle said as he collected their dishes.

Kieffer needed no further prompting. When Foyle joined him in the sitting room a few minutes later, rolling down his sleeves with slightly damp hands, Kieffer had set out a glass for him, and was contentedly sipping at his own, lost in thought in the direction of the blacked-out windows.

Foyle sat, unable to prevent an exhalation of breath as he did so. He pinched the bridge of his nose between thumb and forefinger and then took a healthy swallow of the last of his Scotch. They sat unspeaking for several moments, lost in their thoughts. Foyle was feeling quite more comfortable than his usual wont on the old sofa and uncharacteristically tired.

Kieffer drew his gaze away from the window like drawing a spoon from honey. “How’d it go?”

“Hmm?”

“The investigation.”

“Of course. No witnesses, that we could tell. Took preliminary statements from a couple of landowners upriver, no leads there. Medical examiner says he did indeed drown.” Foyle said, with his eyebrows, _c’est la vie_, and added, “Could be a genuine suicide. Or a terrible accident.”

“You sound almost hopeful.”

Swirling his glass, Foyle regarded Kieffer through its facets, watching as his eye fragmented away from his face, then his mouth, then back again. “Well. I should really be used to it by now, but it never fails to rankle when a murderer strikes on my day off. Suicide is much preferred I should think. Purely in terms of paperwork.”

Kieffer scoffed. “I’ll drink to that.”

They did, and when they lowered their glasses Foyle spent a strange moment caught by Kieffer’s gaze, his throat seizing up tightly. He swallowed several times, and it eased, disappearing completely when Kieffer ceased regarding him so intently from under his brows to visually peruse the books on the shelves lining the room.

“You read Yeats?” he asked.

"My son’s, actually,” Foyle said, “But I’ve read it.”

They turned their talk to dead men of a different kind: of Shakespeare and Milton and Donne, and when their conversation finally petered out, it had gone ten in the evening.

“God, I should be going,” Kieffer said, bounding up to his full height in one sudden motion. “Thanks for letting me cook for a change. I’d like to do it again sometime.”

Foyle rose as well, less agilely, and extended his hand. “I should be thanking you, not the other way around. Don’t you think?”

Kieffer shook his head and covered Foyle’s hand with both of his own. He opened his mouth, then seemed to think better of it. “You’re good company, Christopher,” he said eventually, letting go of his hand.

Foyle's fingers went back to his side, curled towards a loose fist. “Do you remember what I said that day at St. Mary’s?” he asked him, head tilted slightly.

“Oh--sure, sure.”

“You’re a bad liar,” Foyle said simply.

Kieffer fiddled with his hat. “Thanks. I think.”

“You’re very welcome.” He gamely kept three-quarters of his amusement off his face. The other quarter snuck by in a brief, curling smile.

“You English. You say one thing and mean another. How’s a guy supposed to have an honest conversation around here?”

Foyle muttered something about “nuance,” to which Kieffer grumbled, “I heard that.”

“We are a _bit _more reserved than you Americans,” he reminded him.

And, to his horror and delight, Kieffer lay a finger alongside his nose, and winked at him for the second time that night. “I’ll just have to imagine what you would say, I guess,” he said, making for the door. “Might mess it up a bit, though.” He shrugged on his coat and pulled his hat down, Foyle watching warily from close by. “Perhaps you’d say—‘John, you have my undying gratitude?’”

Foyle put a thumb firmly on the center of his lips to dissuade himself from smiling. “Probably not. Try again.”

“Hmmm.” Kieffer struck a mock pose of contemplation. “Or—‘John, you’re the best cook in the world, John,’” and his voice went a bit higher this time, too, in teasingly inaccurate mimicry.

“Captain John Kieffer,” Foyle intoned. The man stilled and looked at him steadily; at attention. Foyle savored his seriousness before he punctured it. “I am _thoroughly offended_,” he began, taking his arm and beginning to chivvy him towards the door, “and if I _ever_ see you under this roof again I shall be very cross indeed. I am a police officer, you know,” he said, now ushering a grinning Kieffer across his threshold. “Unless you come bearing butter and lemons,” he amended, Kieffer now without the house, he within, bracing themselves with opposite hands against the doorframe.

Kieffer fought down his grin—_boyish_, Foyle privately thought—long enough to declare that he _would_ be back, and carrying far more precious offerings than mere butter and lemons. He reached out and squeezed his arm before turning on his heel and marching down the steps. At the road, he turned, and tipped his hat. Foyle leaned a little bit more into the doorframe and watched him go.

It seemed strange that he should be going. It would have been unthinkable to ask him to stay—_on what pretext_?, he demanded of himself, dismayed to discover he had been unconsciously considering options (none suitable). Perhaps he would see John tomorrow, or the next day.

He would have to take his statement about the discovery of the body, after all.

**Author's Note:**

> I've had this on my hard drive for--at least a couple years, at this point. I hesitated to post it because I knew I had fudged a couple canon details here and there, but it's been long enough that I've now forgotten which; and in any case, I've always been terribly fond of the prose and the pairing. Shoutout to wouldyoulikeacupofteadear/Maria_and_her_books for giving me the nudge I needed to get it posted!


End file.
